Holding Zoe’s hand, she remembers the first day she cradled her in her arms, just seconds after Zoe had taken her first breath. She remembers promising always to protect her, to look after her, to shield her from harm. They are promises she is painfully aware of having failed to keep.

Zoe smiles again before closing her eyes and drifting back to sleep.

Audrey looks at her daughter, her heart aching with love. Where, she thinks, will all that love go when Zoe is no longer able to receive it?

Audrey stays for a few minutes more, watching, waiting, wishing that the sheer strength of her love could make her daughter well again. She leans over and kisses Zoe’s forehead, strokes her cheek, and is filled with a panicked disbelief at the thought that there will come a time, very soon, when she will never be able to do this again. A time when she will never again be able to caress her daughter’s skin, kiss her lips, hold her hand. It is baffling to Audrey: how can Zoe be here now and yet soon she will not? How can that possibly happen? It is incomprehensible, yet Audrey knows it to be true: a knowing and a wishing not to know that sears her heart as she gazes down at her daughter, yearning to fuse their bodies together so that she would never have to leave her side.

She kisses Zoe again—twice, three times—knowing there will never be enough time for all the kisses she aches to give. Grief stings her eyes with the loss she knows is to come. She hesitates beside Zoe’s bed, aware that it is time to leave yet longing to stay. The ticking of each precious second chimes loudly in her ears and she knows that in just a few days’ time she will leave the hospital for the last time, carrying in her arms the little girl she had once thought invincible, the little girl for whom she would give her life to shield from harm.

Part Five

June

Chapter 35

Audrey

The babble of conversation filled Audrey’s ears as she looked around the room at her fellow choir members and then down at her watch.

In just over an hour and a half, all ninety-three of them would step onto the stage of the Royal Albert Hall and, with Ben conducting, perform a song in front of a five-thousand-strong audience, half a dozen TV cameras, and potentially millions of television viewers.

Something caught in the back of Audrey’s throat and when she coughed it was like glass shattering in her chest. It could just be nerves but in all likelihood wasn’t. The breathlessness and the coughing had escalated in recent weeks, just as her doctor had warned they would. She’d breathe in only to find that her chest cavity seemed to have shrunk, as though her lungs had begun to give up the fight long before Audrey was ready.

She leaned against the dressing-room door, thinking about all she’d done in the past few weeks, all the researching, planning, and booking. The idea had come to her as she’d lain in the hospital on the night of her collapse, unable to sleep because of the woman snoring in the bed next to her and the whirring of her own memories. But as soon as the thought had nudged its way into her head, Audrey’s only surprise was that it hadn’t occurred to her sooner. It seemed so obvious: the one thing, surely, that neither daughter could refuse. And yet, although decisions had been made, tickets paid for and reservations confirmed, Audrey’s confidence still plummeted every time she imagined telling Lily and Jess what she’d done and asking them to come with her.